How to Deal With Commonwealth Edison

How well advised are readers of the Reader's "Neighborhood News" of June 16th 1989 by writer Ben Joravsky when he tells ratepayers--and who isn't!--not to thumb their noses at Commonwealth Edison.

But what can a person do? So you fight and you lose--leaving it up to Edison to do the right thing--but still you come out of it a self-respecting human being.

Over 26 hours in 1982, I listened attentively to testimony at 14 public hearings held by the Illinois Commerce Commission, stretched over the length and width of Commonwealth Edison's service area. We witnessed the same piteous event repeated and repeated that Christ told of in the parable of the unjust judge and the poor widow woman petitioning him . . . the difference being that in our times Edison and the Commission remain stony of heart, and the public will has so far degenerated that Edison remains arrogantly astride our world. We'll stand up to the Soviets but not stick up for the helpless. Do we think, if we pretend this sort of thing isn't happening, it will go away without our bothering to bring this corporate public servant to account? Not so.

Seven years later Edison appears to be moving to totally break the spirit of any ratepayer remaining and possessed of the spunk to complain.

Under the new franchise between the city and utility, we must bind Edison to true public service with hoops of lawyer words that Houdini himself couldn't break free from. Edison should never have permitted such a situation as that described by Joravsky to develop in the first place. 14,000 employees! With any kind of corporate team morale, it should have been easy to get a volunteer to move in at 2308 North Lincoln and know what was going on by being on the scene. If not, and you, dear reader, are on any kind of friendly basis with Jane Byrne--ask her if she will.

But morale problems will be over on the day James O'Connor commences a three week tour of duty jumping up into nuclear reactor cores to clean them out! You know--"I wouldn't ask anybody to do anything I wouldn't do myself." Fly straight Jim and the day will come, when by acclamation, you will be chosen to lead a Chicago Saint Patrick's Day Parade!